Students gather to talk about U.S. Constitution
On an evening marred with technical difficulties, about a dozen area college students gathered to discuss the constitution on Constitution Day. After Congress passed legislation last year requiring all schools that receive federal funding to talk about the constitution on Constitution Day, Penn State, the Eberly Campus professor Mike Comiskey led a discussion titled “Can Congress Make us Talk About the Constitution” Monday night in the campus corporate training center.
While the brief opening discussion by Comiskey, a longtime political science professor on the Fayette Campus, went well, a live broadcast of a panel discussion of the constitution from University Park was a technological nightmare, with poor picture quality and often-inaudible reception of the five-person panel.
The lecture was spearheaded by the campus director of academic affairs, Dr. Ira Saltz, who said he thought it would be a good topic for Comiskey to tackle in light of the recent legislation.
“I just thought this would be an interesting discussion,” Saltz said at the outset of the lecture.
“Every educational institution that receives federal tax dollars has to have a program about the constitution on Constitution Day,” Comiskey said, noting that he chose the topic of Congress’s requirement because “Americans don’t like to be told what to do.”
He said Congress can legally require university’s that receive federal funds to talk about the constitution on Constitution Day, but that the requirement is the beginning of a slippery slope.
According to Comiskey, the U.S. Constitution is the oldest constitution still recognized in the world and added that with most Americans willing to concede the U.S. as a wealthy and prosperous nation, the constitution has been successful.
In his halting Andy Rooney style and dry humor, Comiskey told the students that “The constitution is pretty good” and then noting some of the nations history and achievements reiterated, “The constitution couldn’t be too bad.”
Comiskey said the document that has survived more than 200 years of scrutiny has seen some considerable changes since it was signed 216 years ago.
For instance, Comiskey said, the original document tolerated and even gave special preference to slavery and slave-owners.
And Comiskey talked briefly about the process of constitution writing, referring to the current battle to build a constitution for the newly liberated Iraq, noting that the dissention between the Shiites, Kurds, and Sunnis is reflective of the divides more than 200 years ago between the north and the south.
In the end, Comiskey and professor Wayne Port concluded that the requirement to talk about the constitution was indeed constitutional but proposed a slippery slope.
“I just want to close and tell you to think about this,” Comiskey said. “Talk about the constitution on Constitution Day, yeah, that is probably alright. Take the first-born of each member of the faculty on Constitution Day – yeah that is probably going to far. Where do we draw the line?”